Stealing Third

Once upon a time there was a young man named Jay.

Jay wanted more than anything to get up in front of his little village and tell them jokes. He was not alone in this. Many others before him and since have also wanted to do this. It wasn't that Jay was better than anyone else at this, or that he was worse than anyone. He was about average in his talents actually, but when his big opportunity came and he got up on that stage and he told his little jokes, the owner of that little stage and the leaders of the village told him don't call us we'll call you.

Now when this happened to the many people before Jay and the many people since Jay, the proper response was to leave the stage and either hone their craft and come back better prepared, or give up the dream and look into the fine career of telephone sanitization. However, Jay didn't do either of these things. After he was told he wasn't wanted, Jay lingered in the lobby, and loitered there to do something that wasn't as common at the time but also wasn't original or creative: it's called networking.

Jay would hang out at the lobby and maybe just outside the building where the stage was kept, and he'd talk to people and trade gossip, and he'd remember people's names and let them know he was there. He'd talk to people who came to the stage to tell their jokes and he'd offer empty platitudes and seemingly sincere support. He'd talk to people who just left the stage despondent and with crushed dreams and he'd pat them on the shoulder and he'd share a drink or two. He'd also talk with the people who worked around the stage and get to know them and he wanted everyone to know that if there was anything they needed, anything at all, he was there. Sounds noble doesn't it? Perhaps it is.

And every now and then, usually after doing something for somebody who appeared to have influence with regards to that stage, he'd ask if there was a chance for him to get up on that stage again, and they'd say gee I don't know lemme go ask someone, and Jay would get that someone's name and add that person to the list of people with whom he'd try to network. Eventually he got on that stage again, and even though he wasn't really any better at telling jokes than he was before, by this point most of the people controlling the stage considered him a friend and therefore had no reason to pull him off of it. I may be way off base, but I believe this is what David Letterman means when he says..

"Every day I wake up and I say I'm gonna keep my mouth shut about this NBC Tonight Show thing because honestly folks I don't have a dog in this fight, but here's the deal. I've known Jay Leno for, I don't know, thirty-five years? A long, long time, and we used to buddy around in the old days, and what we're seeing now is kind of Vintage Jay, and it's enjoyable for me to see this. It's like "hey! There he is! There's the guy I know!" And I thought well I better keep my mouth shut because Lord knows I've got my own problems. ..but I just can't help myself!"

So what is Vintage Jay? It's pretending to be everybody's friend when what you're really doing is keeping an eye on that little stage, and figuring out who controls the strings that get a person to stay up on that stage. It's not about being a better comedian. It's not about making people laugh. It's about the game. It's about king of the hill. How many hands do I have to shake and how many babies do I need to kiss so I can get enough people to let me stay on that stage and pretend to be funny?

Did Johnny Carson ever go around shaking hands in the audience just before or after telling jokes? No. Why? Cuz he didn't have to. He had nothing to prove. He was Johnny effing Carson. All he had to do was a golf swing, and he didn't even need to do that. He did that cuz in his mind, that's where he really was. Where's Jay's mind at? "how do I get to stay on that stage tomorrow???" What deal does he have to make with the devils of network television? All he wants is that piece of stage. It doesn't matter what he has to do to get it and it doesn't matter what he has to do to keep it, or who gets screwed in the process. I'm not necessarily knocking that. Actually, in some ways, this is very American, and Jay will be the first to tell you that he's no Johnny Carson, but the difference here between Jay and Johnny is that Johnny could if he wanted do all the shady & selfish things Jay does and more, and you'd thank him for it, cuz he was Johnny effing Carson. Johnny didn't get the job on the Tonight Show by undercutting his competition. Jack Paar quit and NBC needed a replacement. Johnny was simply the best man for the job back in 1962 and he lived that for thirty years. He didn't have to prove anything or hustle. He just was.

What sets Jay apart from the others who have sat behind that desk is simply this. Johnny Carson, Jack Paar, Steve Allen, David Letterman, Bill Cosby, John Rivers, Bob Newhart, and Conan O'Brien know metaphorically how to Steal For Third. A good comedian can stand on that stage and make you think s/he's playing it safe, but peripherally he or she is gonna trick you into thinking as you laugh. A good comedian is daring, unpredictable, unsafe, and with practically every joke takes the risk of getting pulled off that stage cuz s/he went too far. That's the job. That's how it's done. Can't do that? You don't belong on the big stages. You don't belong behind that desk. You belong in the seedy little dives across the country trying to figure out how to do that and a thousand other things that eventually make okay comedians fantastic.

Jay never figured out how to steal for third. However, he does know how to ask for seconds.

That's what he did back in the old days of Vintage Jay when he'd loiter about in the lobby or help out in the back of the comedy club and beg for another five minutes behind the microphone. He didn't care about being the best. He just cared about staying there. That's what he did then. That's what he's doing now. Why did Jay get the job as permanent guest host in the first place, back when Johnny was still alive? It wasn't cuz he was the best. It's because he's the cheapest. He undercut his competitors. Why'd they give Jay the job instead of David Letterman when Carson's seat became available? Cuz Jay was cheaper than Dave. Cuz Jay was safer than Dave. Cuz Jay will do what he's told, while Dave will tell a NBC executive where to stick it, and he'll even offer diagrams on how far up an NBC executive should make it go.

Dave didn't put up with NBCs shit. He went to CBS. Now he owns his own shit. Dave's made fun of CBS now and then cuz it's funny, or cuz he wanted them to know he wanted something, and wasn't afraid to take it out of someone's hide. CBS has learned to let Dave do his thing and everything will be fine. NBC likes to meddle, and Jay let's them do that.

This has backfired on Jay. The reason they're in the situation they are in now is because whenever NBC comes to Jay and tells him they want to manipulate him, he shrugs and goes along with it. We're gonna replace you in five years with Conan. Oh alright. I get to stay on the stage for five years tho right? We're gonna move you to prime time cuz we don't wanna lose you. Oh alright so long as I'm still doing what I've been doing. We're gonna put you back and rip the rug out from under Conan cuz the affiliates want to kill us for being stupid. Oh alright. Conan's not me so I don't care what happens to him but I get to still be on that stage, right? It's all about being on that effing stage for Jay, and it always has been.

What Jay shoulda done five years ago, when NBC said we are gonna tell Conan he can have Jay's seat in five years, Jay shoulda said look I'll just go to FOX right now. Or HBO. or anywhere. Jay shoulda realized that when they said that they were not firing him in five years, they were instead making him aware he was disposable. Johnny Carson would never have tolerated that. Jack Paar didn't tolerate a network that refused to support him and stand behind him. Jack Paar could not only steal third, but he could pick up home plate and walk off with it. NBC censored him, because he would not play it safe, and Paar quit because of their ignorance and fear.

Jay Leno has been given the position as host of the Tonight Show because he is the network's lap dog. He kisses their ass. He plays it safe. He may be an NBC Executive's wet dream, but he is no Carson. He's no Paar. He's no Allen. He's no Letterman. He's no O'Brien.

I don't watch The Tonight Show when Jay is behind that desk, because so far as I'm concerned the tradition of The Tonight Show died w/Johnny Carson. It looked like it might get resurrected because Conan O'Brien does deserve that chair. He's fiendishly clever, outrageous, controversial, daring, sly, and he knows how to make his audience laugh and think at the same time. When NBC lets Jay Leno sit behind that desk after their Olympics, it will for all intents and purposes be the end of the Tonight Show. They may still call it The Tonight Show, but so long as a cowardly and unfunny comic sits behind that desk, there IS no Tonight Show. They can play with the numbers and ratings all they want to prove themselves right, but America needs a comedian behind that desk that knows how to Steal Third. Jay ain't it.

I'm boycotting NBC. My shunning them alone will not be enough, I know. I'm not doing this because I think just me not watching will change their minds or bring down the empire. I just can't personally support a network that behaves in this manner. I left FOX back in 2003 after what they did to Joss Whedon, and only recently came back when they let him and Eliza Dushku do Dollhouse. They gave Whedon a fair shake this time so I got nothing against FOX currently, but NBC did Conan wrong, and by keeping Jay Leno on their air they're doing a disservice to anyone who loves good comedy.

So long as Jay Leno remains behind that desk, I'm boycotting NBC. I hope you do the same.

It's nothing personal Jay, but we mean business. No hard feelings? Good. Now, go stick your head in a toilet and flush.

From Belief to Knowledge

Here's my (currently) four step plan from belief to knowledge. This is a work in progress and is far from done. I'll improve upon the idea as I figure out what works and what doesn't. That's the whole point of this. Unlike belief structures, a rational thought process can evolve and change at the drop of a hat, as new observations and evidence are presented.

Since abandoning all religion and belief, I've noticed that in little ways my brain is still mired in beliefs and concepts that are based on inadequate data. We all have this. We have made assumptions in our lives based in information we BELIEVE to be correct when objectively speaking it's not known.

For example, many assume there to be a god and assume the bible to have been written by god. Once one determines these to be lies, saying "god bless you" to someone who just sneezed suddenly becomes the most preposterous thing, yet I still catch myself doing that because I've been programmed to behave that way.

So I'm trying to do the following steps whenever I come up against stuff like this. I fear it's gonna be a life long process cuz forty years of habits are very hard to break.

Step one: Convert what you believe into two new categories: What You Know and What You Don't Know.

What does this mean? Well find something you believe, and try to prove it. Can you prove it? If you can, it goes in the KNOW pile. If you can't, it goes in the DON'T KNOW pile.

For example, I can prove there's a place called Paris. I've never been there. I don't plan to go, but I have seen ample evidence from multiple sources that it exists. So for me, for now, Paris goes in the what I know pile.

I can't prove a god exists. I might want there to be one really bad. I might want to believe, but I don't know. Until I know, it has to go in the what I don't know pile.

I can choose to put Paris in the Don't Know pile. I can choose to put god in the Know pile. These are my piles. This is my brain. In fact I can move them around all I want and try to find what works for me. All my life God was in the Know pile. I don't know anymore. So I moved him/her/it to the don't know pile. That's working a lot better for me.

If evidence presents itself that Paris doesn't exist, that maybe all the evidence pointing to its existence has somehow been fabricated, then I can move Paris to the don't know pile.

Step two: Fix all double negatives in What You Know.

I've noticed a lot of believers saying to me that I can't prove god doesn't exist. That's a double negative. I'm seeing similar double negatives in my own thought processes. Whenever I see a double negative, I try to read the statement again as a positive. For example, the phrase "I can't prove god doesn't exist" has two negatives. If this is a true statement, then saying "I can prove god does exist" should also be true. It's not. So the double negative statement is a fallacy. It's awkward and misleading abuse of the language. It doesn't convey a clear rational thought. In fact, much of modern day religion hides behind language like this.

Oftentimes one false belief is based on another false belief, and once you see them as false, they cross each other out. The Bible is allegedly the word of God. How do we know this? It says it in the bible. How do we know God loves you? The bible tells you God loves you. How do we know there's a God? The bible confirms it. How can we trust the bible? It's the word of god. This circular logic is a house of cards that blows down when you realize there's no god. God doesn't love you. He doesn't hate you. There is no god. The bible is not god's message. It was not written by god. God doesn't exist. The Bible was written by men as a way to prove God's existence. They may have felt the presence of God, but that's no proof.

Step three: Rename What You Don't Know into Not Real Until Proven.

If you don't know something, it's not real.

Many say that until something is proven to not exist, it might, and therefore it's okay to behave as if it did exist. This is wrong. Believing in unicorns on the moon is foolhardy. Maybe they just always stay on the other side of the moon away from the prying observations of mankind. Maybe when we went up there the unicorns were afraid of our astronauts and ran away. There were no unicorn tracks on the ground. We do not see them in telescopes when we look at the moon. There is no evidence of unicorns. Moon unicorn enthusiasts could describe elaborate underground cities inside the moon where the unicorns flourish. It would be an endearing and adorable myth, but myths are fiction. They are not true.

We have never seen, felt, heard, tasted, or smelled god. Some could argue that god is all around us. He is in all living things. He's in nonliving things. He's in rocks and trees. God is in black holes and grasshoppers. He's what keeps all atoms together. He's all this poetic mumbo jumbo. God is whatever we haven't discovered yet.

God used to be in the sky, in the Heavens, because Man hadn't figured out how to see past clouds yet. Then we learned Flight, and visited the clouds, and found out they were just water vapor. So that's when god "moved." Religious people were like that's just an interpretation. It's figurative. It shouldn't be taken literally. So they moved god. This is convenient for them, because it means their god is always one step ahead of science. Science will never be able to know absolutely everything, so there'll always be some place for a god to hide from his believers.

However, by now, if a god existed, we would have found traces of his existence. Dinosaurs are no more. Some theorize that they evolved into birds or reptiles or something else. Whatever. Dinosaurs are no more today. Yet there is evidence of their existence that can be found in the fossil record of this planet. Historical Geology reveals a great deal more compelling evidence to the past of this planet than the bible. Yet people would rather believe in the bible than their own eyes. There's no mention of dinosaurs in the bible, because all dinosaurs became extinct prior to the writing of the Bible. If god were omniscient, and he were telling mankind the truth in "his word" he would have mentioned them. He did not. Why are dinosaurs absent from the bible? Because the liars who wrote the bible were oblivious to their existence.

God is not the Unknown. We make the unknown a god so that we feel better on the surface. God didn't make us in his image. We made up god in our own, because it's difficult for us to believe that this universe was made by a platypus. That would mean the platypus is the center of the universe and humanity can't accept that.

We must assume something doesn't exist until we find evidence that it does. I may have cancer right now. I haven't gone to see a doctor. I feel fine. However, there are people who have in the past felt fine and through some accident or during a routine checkup they learn that they have cancer. Should I behave as if I were dying of cancer on the off chance that a malignant tumor might exist somewhere in my body? Or should I live my life as if there were no cancer, until there's ample and obvious proof to the contrary?

If you don't know something, don't pretend you do.

Step four: Wash, rinse, repeat.

This is an ongoing process. I don't think it ever really ends. There will be beliefs you put in one pile and later discover belonged in the other. It's a procedure I have been doing for months and see no end in sight. Good luck with it. I hope you find rational enlightenment. It may not save your soul or lead you to meditating in a Tibetan temple or get you laid, but at least you'll be able to think for yourself and not have some other people telling you to follow their god so they can manipulate and control your thoughts and actions.

Have a fulfilling and godless day.

Fumin' Hume & Whacky Woods

Tiger Woods will recover as a golfer. Whether he can recover as a person, I think is a very open question, and it’s a tragic situation with him. He’s lost his family, it’s not clear to me whether he’ll be able to have a relationship with his children, but the Tiger Woods that emerges once the news value dies out of this scandal, the extgent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He’s said to be a Buddhist, I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith, so my message to Tiger would be “Tiger, turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.

- Brit Hume, Faux News commentator and news maker upper

Brit Hume wants Tiger Woods to convert to Catholicism from Buddhism so that Tiger can ask a god he does not currently believe in for forgiveness of a sin that Buddhists really don't take all that seriously. I mean we're talking about consenting adults here. Granted, Tiger having sex outside of marriage may mess up his wife's spiritual awareness, but that's only if she's Buddhist too.

In the Buddhist tradition, under the Five Precepts and the Eightfold Path, one should neither be attached to nor crave sensual pleasure. The third of the Five Precepts is "To refrain from sexual misconduct." For most Buddhist laypeople, sex outside of marriage is not "sexual misconduct," especially when compared to, say, adultery or any sexual activity which can bring suffering to another human being. Each may need to consider whether, for them, sexual contact is a distraction or means of avoidance of their own spiritual practice or development.

- The New World Encyclopedia

Okay, so, maybe Buddhism does take adultery more seriously than just your occasional casual one night stand among unmarried people. Anyway, Brit Hume was talking out his asshole. He doesn't know jack shit about Buddhism and was making blatant assumptions without having any facts. This right here is precisely why Faux News is about as dependable as a chair with no seat.

I don't even know if we're all 100% certain what Tiger actually believes anyway. I can't take Brit Hume on his word about anything. He makes up news all the time! That's why Faux hired him in the first place, to make shit up. My point is, why would Tiger Woods abandon his current faith (Buddhism or whatever) for one that would just make him feel worse about himself?

I think Brit Hume should abandon Christianity. It's a blatant load of lies and dogma that's outdated by millenia. Brit Hume and Tiger Woods should embrace the only religion that's really worth a damn: I speak of course of The Church of the SubGenius. Praise "Bob." Hail Eris. Sagan will set you free! EIYIYIYIYIYIYIY!

Brit Hume feels if Tiger Woods turns to Catholicism, he'll set an example to the rest of the world as a great reformed adulterer, just like all the other famous adulterers like David Letterman, Bill Clinton, Jack Kennedy, Gary Hart, Senator John Edwards, OJ Simpson's dead ex-wife, etc. Christianity is full of great adulterers! Hell, Lot fucked his daughters in his sleep after turning his wife into salt. Well I guess technically since his wife just died that wasn't really adultery, but you get my drift. There's fucking going on all over the Bible if you know where to look! Song of Solomon is a particular favorite of mine with breasts running about like gazelles! Anyway, I digress. I wonder if Brit Hume is an adulterer? I guess that's between him and his god, and his wife, and his ex-wife, and his mistress, and the media. I bet Brit Hume thinks the Dalai Llama should convert to Christianity just in case he's an adulterer too.

Tiger should not convert to Catholicism, because Christianity may absolve him of past sins, but then it pretends to expect you to sin no more while simultaneously it knows you're gonna. You can't help it. Why? Cuz you're a sinner! So it's an endless cycle. You commit sin, you feel bad about it, you ask for repentance, you feel bad cuz now you can't do whatever it is you did before so you go do that again and now you feel bad cuz you did that so you ask for forgiveness and now you feel bad again cuz let's face it religions have you by the short and curlies. Religion tells you not to do anything that's worth doing. Where's the fun in that? What Tiger Woods needs is a religion that will not only absolve him of sin, but will give him The Grand Excuse. Tiger needs a religion that will allow him to go forth and sin some more! There IS a simple answer, dear friend! A glowing beacon of slack for anyone who's pink of heart and green of the pocketbook.

Something I've learned in my recent transition from devout Christian to devout atheist, throughout this horrendous ordeal in which I traded in my illusion of something for an actual nothing, my faith in J. R. "Bob" Dobbs has remained constant and steadfast. I got in on the ground floor of that up & coming religion back in 1985, when it only cost twenty bucks to get right with "Bob." Today, a lifetime membership costs thirty bucks and it's still quite a bargain. It's guaranteed or triple your money back! You do the math!

Brit Hume has accused Tiger Woods of being a buddhist and thinks of himself as a Christian, but this could not be further from the truth. Contrary to the beliefs of both Hume and Woods, and everyone else on the face of this planet, they are all SubGeniuses. Let me explain.

In Christianity, "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of god." It was explained to me in Sunday School thusly: You are born a sinner. Just as kangaroos give birth to kangaroos and horses give birth to horses and penguins give birth to beavers, so too do humans only give birth to humans, and thanks to stupid Adam & stupid Eve eating a stupid apple from the stupid Tree Of Stupid Knowledge, all humans are also sinners. And they're stupid. P. T. Barnum once said "there's a sucker born any minute," and it takes one to know one. And since the act of sex is a sin according to Christianity, your very conception was an act of evil! So we're screwed before we even slide down the canal. God stacked the deck against us. Provided you believe in a god.

However, in the doctrine of the SubGenius Church, all are born with Original Slack but we all have it stolen away by The Conspiracy at birth, when the obstetrician spanks us on the butt to make us breathe and cry and piss in his face.

In Christianity, the Word of God must be 'interpreted' by religious scholars, church deacons, televangelists, or crazy people on street corners, so that one can glean the Divine Meaning and understand what God is trying to tell you, cuz apparently He's misplaced your cell number.

In the SubGenius faith, anything that comes out of the mouth of any ordained minister immediately becomes gospel. Even, and especially, if it contradicts with previous gospel by other SubGenius ministers.

So I tell you here and now, as a dues paid (tho not card carrying cuz I accidentally put it through the wash cycle one day and Stang didn't laminate mine) SubGenius ordained minister, every living creature on this planet is SubGenius! Recent discoveries in unlocking the human genome reveal that over half our DNA mirrors that of everything from aphids to zucchini. This means the Yeti gene is dormant inside every living thing. If you don't believe me, well your beliefs are pretty whacky too so nyah!

Now, Brit Hume recently told Tiger Woods to abandon the buddha in favor of a zombie that's been bolted to a tree for two thousand years. I say both of these men need to accept their true Yeti ancestry and get right with "Bob." The only way to do that is to send thirty dollars to the Church of the SubGenius. That goes for you as well! And penguins and beavers and lichen and pretty much anything with DNA! ..and thirty dollars! Bring your credit card, cuz you'll also wanna get a cool T-shirt and some DVDs that'll cause your head to explode with delight.

Now, for the record when you click on that link I do not get ANY of the money. I should but I don't. Okay, I really shouldn't, but my point is I don't say this as some kinda get rich quick scheme. Like Brit Hume, I sincerely believe I'm doing a fellow human being a favor by offering this advice and like Brit Hume I'm also full of shit. But we're ALL full of shit! We are all shitful and have fallen short of the glory that is Slack! Or, words to that effect.

Praise "Bob!"

Let there be Slack!

Hyuh! Hep me sumbody!

She ain't got no legs my legs are on fire how can ya run from yer own legs!?

There's something inside your head!

Are we not men?

TOGA! TOGA! TOGA!

"Bob"

IS

"Bob"!

Bitter Koolaid

This blog post was originally going to be a successful attempt by myself to argue against my being a militant atheist. My initial argument was that I can't be a militant anything. I'm a pacifist. I feel guilty swatting flies! How can I be a militant anything? Long before I became an atheist, I refused to accept that war ever resolved anything. How do I know this? I studied history. World War One was to be The War To End All Wars. Didn't do a good job of that, did it? Several wars before and since are proof positive: all war does is allow the winners to rewrite history so that it appears war solved something, and it allows the losers to opt to resent the winners until they can find a way to get the upper hand and kick the winners ass in a rematch. Or just drink more vodka. Personally? I do believe in vodka. It's real. I've seen it. Alcoholics are more right than religious zealots. at least I can prove vodka exists.

Anyway, I wanted this blog post to last more than a paragraph so I went to look up what a militant atheist actually is. Yes I'm perfectly aware that wikipedia is not the most reliable and universally accepted source for information, but I tend to use it because 1) I do not recall ever personally disagreeing dramatically with stuff I find in there and 2) I'm a lazy ass. Over at wiki, militant atheism is described thusly:

Julian Baggini defines militant atheism as "Atheism which is actively hostile to religion", which "requires more than strong disagreement with religion - it requires something verging on hatred and is characterised by a desire to wipe out all forms of religious belief. Militant atheists tend to make one or both of two claims that moderate atheists do not. The first is that religion is demonstrably false or nonsense and the second is that it is usually or always harmful

Apparently the word militant in the phrase "militant atheism" doesn't involve the military. I'm not sure why the word "militant" is combined with "atheism" but there's no actual use of force involved.

I wanted to debate this. However, I can't, really. IF the above description is what it means to be a militant atheist, then I pretty much fit the bill, but with some caveats. For example, I didn't start with a desire to wipe out all forms of religion. I may not be there quite yet but I'm approaching that avenue and all the road signs are pointing that way. I see that humanity will eventually abandon the concept of godhood altogether, or we will destroy one another. I'm not sure which outcome would be an improvement.

When I was a young Born Again Christian (something I now refer to as "having drank the Kool Aid"), I still believed myself religiously tolerant. I still thought jews and muslims and buddhists and hindus etc all were going to burn in the Christian Hell, but that was for God to hammer out and I tried not to think about it too much. While here on Earth, it appeared that most of these people still believed in goodness and these other religions can still coexist with my religion even though they're wrong, because we all inherently want the best for each other and humanity as a whole. As for who'd be my neighbor after Judgment Day, I figured I'd let Peter, Paul and Mary discuss it. Or sing about it.

Then I stopped drinking the Kool-Aid. I stopped going to a Baptist Church every Sunday. I still believed in the Christian God, but I lost faith that any man or woman on this planet could get me any closer to Him than I already was. I went to college and attended college courses that challenged me to look at other people's belief structures with more objective eyes, and also to look at my own with an astute objectivity that eventually led me to uncertainty and ethical vertigo. I walked away realizing that it was all not as cut and dried as I thought. In fact, it was so convoluted and complicated and crazy insane that I didn't really want to dissect it any more than I already had. Pandora's Box had been opened, but I thought if I could just sit on the lid, maybe it wouldn't all escape.

Over time I have been forced to accept that not only is my religion wrong, they are all wrong. Every single last one of them. Somebody somewhere uses these religions toward bad ends. Yes, there are others who use them for good. You can argue that overall the good outweighs the bad. I defended it that way for decades myself.

Televangelists convincing poor people to give to them so they can buy another limousine. A president who promised to do God's Will and then had a man killed in cold blood because he threatened Daddy. Priests having sex with children. Rabbis still enforcing rules that make no sense and hold no bearing on reality today even at the expense of the health and well-being of his flock. Parents refusing to allow their child the best in modern medicine on religious grounds. A man in Utah convincing many women to marry him because its what his god tells him to do. Other people telling that guy he can't do that, because their god tells them what to do. Entire cultures that think of sex as depraved and nudity as ugly, but violence under the right circumstances is completely acceptable. Censorship of light-hearted use of coarse references to reproductive and excretory organs as if children will be somehow mentally harmed by contemplating their own bodily functions. People killing doctors in cold blood because the doctors kill babies who haven't even been born yet because the pregnant girl was too young and scared and who knows what else to want the baby because parents do not properly prepare their children for the consequences of sex because religion has confused the issue, refused to allow proper sex education for our youth, and demanded abstinence be heralded rather than the use of condoms (because whether you like it or not some teenagers are going to fuck each other as it is a biological imperative). A pope that would rather see tens of millions in third world countries die of plague and famine than re-access religious dogma. Closet homosexuals who act out violently towards proudly open homosexuals because their beliefs do not allow them to accept themselves for who they are or the reality around them for what it is. Believers in Allah blowing up buildings with airplanes. ...Kirk Cameron for crying out loud! Can't I just point at Kirk Cameron and you'd believe me?

Am I a militant atheist because I see these examples and countless others and am frustrated at how helpless I am to stop this madness from continuing any further? Then I guess I'm a militant pacifist atheist, because the only way to stop this madness would be to become literally militant and blow up a few churches. Be thankful I'm NOT militant!

I would argue the use of the word "hatred." I don't hate believers. I don't even really hate religion itself per se. Like a gun sitting on a counter unused, religion doesn't kill people. However, people who imagine themselves to operate as The Hand Of God DO kill people, and do so more often that we'd like to admit.

I hate how some use religion to hurt others. I hate how some do that and they don't even know they're doing it. I hate that I'm powerless to stop this harm, because Verse help me I'm still a Constitutionalist, and I believe in the freedoms described therein, including the right to believe however you choose without fear of reprisal. But dammit if you saw a kid stick his fork in the light socket over and over again because he likes the jolt it gives him and he thinks its funny even though it's killing him, WOULDN'T YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING? WOULDN'T YOU WANT TO STOP IT?

Mostly I hate that some people KNOW religion hurts other, but they're in a position of influence and they use their place of authority dangerously anyway because they think it serves some higher purpose. Arguably, Mother Theresa was allegedly an atheist near the end of her life, but she continued her work anyway, and there are many critics of her actions especially towards the end of her life where her position as a leader and authority may have caused more harm than good for some, even though she was indeed helping others. Does the end justify the means? Really? Every time?

I do hate people who have figured out, like me, that belief is a lie but they use it to control others, and they're out there. Snake oil salesmen. Con artists. Charlatans who walk into a dry town and promise rain for a price. They're out there, and if you believe in them, they will believe in your pocketbook until it's all gone. Then they'll move on to the next mark.

There are some Mother Theresa like people who honestly sincerely believe in what they're doing and they mean well and nine times out of ten everything works out. However, it's impossible to police. For every one that's successful, there's easily a half dozen or so who meant well but for one reason or another fail and they take a lot of people down with them, and at least as many who do help but also use the place of influence it gives them for occasional or habitual personal gain. There are some who are downright charlatans, and since we're talking about faith, it's impossible to tell the bad from the good, because I honestly can't say that George W Bush was a charlatan. He might have been just incredibly stupid. Either way, he dragged our country's reputation through the mud. It will take generations for America to win over the hearts and minds of many throughout the world. It may never actually be possible. George W Bush claimed to be on a mission from his God to stop the Do-Gooders, but all he did was leave the presidency with the country having more enemies than we had when he started. If you still believe George W Bush's actions were good for this country and humanity as a whole, please please please stop reading. I'm not talking to you. I don't want to save you from your own ignorance. Please continue to believe your petty little lies about reality. Go away. Embrace your imaginary savior.

To the rest of you who are still here, what can I possibly say to make you see where I'm coming from? Let's try this example.

Let's say you like to watch tele-evangelists who lay hands on people and make the lame walk and the blind see. You've seen it yourself. You watch the show. He goes around and heals people. Right there before your eyes. I could argue that this is TELEVISION, and if I had his resources and experience I could probably cook up a similar program that would be just as convincing, but then at the end of the program I could show everyone how I tricked you into thinking I was a healer. Of course, a good magician never reveals his secrets, unless of course you're Penn & Teller.

Let's say your favorite Tele-Evangelist presumes to have the Power of God in his fingertips. Has it ever occurred to you that if this was actually a valid way of healing people, that hospitals wouldn't need to exist? If this was really real, everyone would believe without question, and if anyone got sick they'd call up one of these guys. In fact, if any Christian has the power of God inside them once saved, why can't anyone heal anybody? Why does it have to be that guy in the suit with the microphone standing on the stage asking you to send him more money?

ANY miracle you see can be explained rationally, given enough time and resources to investigate the miraculous claim. There are no miracles. At most, there are physical processes that we don't understand yet, that science has yet to uncover, but there's a rational explanation for anything that happens in the universe.

Maybe you think that conventional medicine just wants to keep their business in check and go out of their way to discredit Men Of Faith with the Power to Heal. I assure you, if Jerry Lewis could hand his kids over to televangelists to heal for him, he woulda done it decades ago. In fact I bet he tried that because Jerry Lewis has been desperate all his adult life to save his Kids. What has he turned to instead? Science. Gene therapy. Research into the Genome Project. Progress is being made, not by putting your hands on a kid with muscular dystrophy, but rigidly strict trials and experimentation and research and testing. Science may not solve the Common Cold in our lifetime, but muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinsons and other diseases are not out of the realm of possibility for a cure within 20 years. We've also made great progress in combating cancer, again not through the power of any god but by using the scientific method to solve the puzzles of the universe.

Maybe you think the Healing of Hands only works for those who believe. It's a test of faith. No matter what I say, you're gonna see it the way you do. This isn't hate I feel. It's sadness. Cuz I used to think like you. Then I saw facts and science and logic and rational thought, and despite all these things I still clung desperately to my beliefs because I so badly wanted to believe in magic. I wanted to believe in miracles. I wanted to believe in a god that has a plan and yes some people suffer but they must so that they can become better for it. God doesn't hate you when he punishes you. He's molding and shaping you into something better, like you were a piece of clay. I so desperately wanted to believe this just as you do.

I feel like someone who has been drowning, but I just found a place in the maelstrom where I'm relatively secure, and I look back now and reach my hand out to the maelstrom trying to find others who need to be pulled from the dangers of belief and blind faith. Problem is, looks like most of you like drowning. You don't know you're drowning. You have been told the water is air. You think you're perfectly fine. I know. Cuz I used to think that too. And so I'm standing here at the shoreline trying to figure out how I can send you a life preserver that you won't reject, because you think life preservers look like crosses, or stars, or a hammer & sickle, or whatever. You've been lied to for so long, you think lie preservers ARE life preservers.

Again, I've studied history, and the only reason religion looks good in the eyes of some historical texts is cuz the people writing and editing those texts happened to adhere to the popular religion of the time. The Roman Catholic Church downplays things like the Spanish Inquisition, or the burning of 'Saint' Joan of Arc. However, throughout history the Church condoned or quietly allowed a lot of actions and transgressions against heathen in order to defend their own place of power in the hierarchy of society.

And let's face it, they had to if they wanted to stay in power. Anyone who owns a copyright of popular material today would agree. If you don't defend your copyright in the courts, you're going to lose your right to claim ownership. It can get mighty ugly. You may find yourself spending more money to defend your ownership of intellectual property than you can actually make with the intellectual property itself. The entire system sucks, but it's the only way to make an 'idea' valuable, and technically it doesn't really do that. I mean, you can't copyright ideas, just how they're presented. but I digress. That's a whole other blog post.

My point is, The Church in power has to assert its domination over nonbelievers. Otherwise, eventually the nonbelievers will win. Why? Cuz they're always right.

There is no god. Whatever religion you believe in is a lie. Sorry. I'm not gonna pacify you. I'm not going to tell you that your religion is different from all the rest. There are also no fairies, no ghosts, no souls, and no afterlife. It's all a sham, fabricated a very very long time ago by people who wanted to pacify other people who feared the unknown. They filled in the gaps with possibilities, elaborated and embellished on these possibilities, and eventually the really cool sounding ideas were adapted and adopted as real and actual when there's literally zero evidence supporting them whatsoever. It'd be nice if we all had souls. It'd be cool if there was life after death. It's heartwarming to believe those we love and have lost still exist somewhere. I was really looking forward to seeing my Dad again when I die. I won't. I can't. It just doesn't work that way.

However, I'm not a militant anything, so I'm not going to pick up a gun and shoot you for being a believer. You can continue to believe all you want, just as I will continue to KNOW.

I would like to think you'll respond in kind, and allow me to not believe, but history is not on my side. Religious zealots tend to eventually use violence against any influential opposition. Otherwise, The Truth Will Out.

You're not right in your beliefs, but take comfort in the fact that none of the other six and a half billion people on this planet are either. And neither am I. What I currently DO believe? And I now actively look for 'beliefs' I take for granted and challenge them when I find them, what I currently accept as correct about this universe is misinformed. I don't have all the answers any more than you do. However, I know which answers are incorrect. ALL of them.

Maybe someday we'll figure out a way to scientifically measure a soul. Maybe someday I'll be proven wrong and we'll learn that souls actually exist. We'll be able to metaphorically point at it and go "that's a soul." When that happens, I won't believe in a soul. I'll KNOW that souls exist, because I'll be able to replicate the experiment that proved souls exist and I'll be able to see for myself. The thing is, one should not operate outside of what is known. If you don't know something exists, behaving as if it does exist is counterproductive. A tightrope walker would not jump off the tightrope unless he knows there's a net underneath to catch him. He wouldn't just believe the net's there. He'd look down and make sure it is there. In fact if he's smart, he would have personally checked the net before starting his routine to be certain it was secure and would break his fall. That is the difference between believing and knowing.

Science is not the end all be all either. Something can come along later that will cause us to look at everything we take for granted now in an entirely new light. Gravity. Molecular structure. Weather patterns in a global atmosphere. Animal behavior. Pyrotechnics. Everything we think we know about how these things work could be wrong. This is why the scientific method is all about testing and retesting hypotheses. Though science uses words like "Law" they're really just descriptions of the results of tests that have not yet been disproven. They have only been proven repeatedly, and until something better comes along they are called Laws. In fact Sir Issac Newton's Law of Gravity has kinda been disproven by the Theory of Relativity, but Newton's description still works here on Earth, but not when you're looking at the entire breadth of the universe in relation to Earth and other things that are out there. It gets a bit more complicated than Newton postulated, but we still accept Newton's description because why fix a tire that's not flat? It still gets you where you need to go.

Religion fears change because the people in positions of power do not want to be usurped. Science embraces change. If someone could have come up with a valid way of proving the theory of Creationism, then believe me scientists would have dropped Evolution in a heartbeat. However, Creationism is not science. Intelligent design is just an attempt to rewrite religion to make it look like science, because if there's one thing religion is good at doing, it's learning to adapt and change to the needs of humanity, so that it can still appear to be productive and instrumental for the benefit of mankind.

If you can't adapt to the constantly changing landscape, you're gonna get Left Behind. Any con artist will tell you that. In fact, I think some of them already have. Like for example, the guy who wrote the Left Behind series of books.

You can call me militant if you want, but you use the word with about as meaning as Richard Pryor used the word "fucking." I'm not militant about anything. I never attended ROTC. I only spent one day in the boy scouts. I've never joined the armed forces, and had I, it woulda been as conscientious objector. I don't believe personally in wielding a gun, although I believe you have the right to choose to wield a gun. I just don't believe you have the right to fire it at another human being. Like, EVER. I believe you can carry around a thermonuclear warhead if you want, but you better have the safety on, just in case. Guns should only be fired in Chekov plays.

I don't believe religion to be demonstrably false. I know it is. I know it's wrong. I know it's dangerous. I know it hurts people. Yes it helps people too, but the ways it helps people could be done without the religious connotations. You Will Know Them By Their Works. Not by which god they aspire to appease. There's no need for gods to enter into any equation, unless one wants to stop by and order us all a round of drinks. It just better not be Kool Aid.

...

Anyway, all the bullshit above is just my roundabout way of saying I know I'm not a militant atheist, but I also know that's not gonna stop you from calling me one. Just as I know there's not a god, but that's not gonna stop you from choosing to believe in one anyway.

I really wish I was still ignorant. I wish I could still believe in things without proof. Really, the world appears to be much more magical and fanciful and all that, but it's not real. It's a facade. If you have to believe in something without proof, it means you are allowing yourself to know a lie as if it were truth, and why do any of us want that for ourselves, or our children? Why do we lie to our children about Santa Claus, and why do we lie to ourselves about Jesus Christ?

I want to destroy religion, but I don't want to do it with force. I want to use common sense. I don't want to fight fire with fire. I want to combat ignorance with truth. You can call me a militant atheist all you want, but it doesn't make me one. It doesn't make any atheist militant. I may be beligerent. I may be combative. I may be contentious. I may be a fanatic. However, I will never be violent. I will never use what I know to maim or kill believers. I like to think that means we atheists are taking the high road, cuz you zealots out there will draw first blood at the drop of a hat.

If history is any indication however, it also means you will win. Because throughout history, believers have won out over nonbelievers by silencing the opposition with brute force. Cut the tongues from the blasphemers. That's your answer to the argument. You know why? You can't win the argument without cheating.

You can't prove there's a god, so you make sure you're the last one still standing, and then who will there be to oppose you once you've silenced the argument through bloodshed? No one. You will stand alone, with the illusion of a god standing beside you to keep you company. I'm glad I won't be there to see that. But don't think that means I hate you. I pity you, and I pity the future of mankind when it comes to that, because it means the Dark Ages will have returned forever.

Reason For The Season

"I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. " - Carl Sagan

This is the first Christmas I'm spending without a savior in it. Well, in actuality every Christmas is without a savior, but this is the first time I actually know that, rather than believing in the possibility of savior I can't prove exists. This is in some ways a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. In other ways, it's harder than I imagined. I guess it's that it's hard, but not the way I anticipated. Maybe I thought I'd get suicidal. Statistics indicate more people attempt suicide this time of year than any other. However, although there's no statistics to prove this, I'd be willing to bet it's more believers than nonbelievers who find this a significant time of year to take their own life.

Wow. First paragraph into this and already I'm pretty dark and maudlin. Not my intent.

I've heard more and more as I become more vocal in my atheism that "you can't disprove religion." This is a double negative which therefore nullifies its use in a debate. If you remove the double negative you get "you can prove religion." But you can't. It is by design unprovable. That's why it persists despite an onslaught of opposing evidence that science holds the key to understanding the universe as it actually is rather than what religion hopes it will be. Faith makes it impossible to argue the point, because you can't argue with faith. A person who has faith will just dismiss you as a nonbeliever, regardless of how much proof you have that they are wrong.

A better way to say it is "One can't prove religion" however that wording doesn't help the religious at all. As I've said before, I used to be a Christian but over the past year I've come to the realization that I stopped being a Christian a long time ago. I kept trying to quantify my beliefs, so that I could accept more and more of what's real and actual without letting go of the fanciful and imaginary. Let me try to explain what I mean, in the light of Christmas context. 'Tis the season after all.

Let's say you're a kid around six or seven years old and you've been told the entire story of Santa Claus. You have bought it all hook line and sinker. You don't actively try to disprove this story because your own parents have told you and you've no reason to believe them to be liars. People in your community - adults that you've come to respect and appreciate - behave in your presence as if Santa were real. They speak of him even when they think you're not listening as if he were real, or so you assume. You're too young to understand sarcasm or playful banter between adults. You have no reason to question the validity of the story, so you accept everything at face value.

Then one day your boots are missing, and you assume your mom put them in the closet cuz she's done that before but you want to go outside. So you go into the closet to find your boots, and while in there you happen upon a bag of presents that are addressed from Santa Claus to members of your household. This was an accident. You honestly didn't mean to uncover this evidence, but now that you have, your mind is suddenly perplexed and you find yourself questioning the story without realizing it. But being a good little child you decide to take this directly to your parents and see if they can answer this for you.

So you go straight to your Mom and Dad and you say you were looking for your boots but found Santa's bag, and ask them why we have Santa's bag in our closet. Your parents at first look worried, but then your Dad smiles at you and says that's cuz Santa's a busy guy and he may not be able to make it to our house right on the 25th, so he sent some presents ahead of schedule, so we wouldn't go without. It's a service Santa provides some parents and this year he selected your household and aren't you special? That satisfies your curiosity and so you don't think much about it. Probably cuz your Mom then suggested milk & cookies or something to take your mind off it.

But then next Christmas you're a year older and this seed of uncertainty has planted itself. There's now little things about the story of Santa that you just don't get. For example, in Twas The Night Before Christmas, Santa comes down a chimney. You don't have a chimney. Maybe you bring this up to your parents and they have a suitable answer, but that's just one example.

Why do the reindeer fly? At school the teacher says that birds fly and deer run. Why didn't Santa just tie a bunch of birds to his sleigh if he wanted to fly? Come to think of it, why doesn't he use a rocket? I mean he needs to go fast right? What's faster than a rocket?

And how come some of your friends get exactly what they want for Christmas and some of them don't? And why do some of your friends not talk much about Santa while others can't talk about him enough? And why are some adults more tightlipped about the whole thing than others? And by now you've heard some rumors that there's no Santa at all, but you dismiss those lunatics outright. Your own parents say there is a Santa, so if some strangers just don't believe, they're probably the ones that Santa gives coal to cuz they been bad, right?

But then there's the bully at school. You personally witnessed him be bad all year, and yet he boasted getting the biggest presents of all that year. What the hell is that about? And then there's the letters you've been writing to Santa. You never get a response back. Of course that's because he's busy, but this year you noticed your Mom didn't even put a stamp on the envelope when she took it to the mailbox. How's it gonna get to Santa without a stamp? She puts stamps on all the other mail. When she forgets, the mailman doesn't take the envelope and then she argues with him for ten minutes. Yet when it comes to a letter for Santa, it doesn't need a stamp? ...Well, he IS Santa. Even the mailman knows that. However, over time these little incidents add up, and while each event separately has an explanation that keeps the story of Santa intact, the fact all these events happened and all these uncertainties occurred over time reveals a deeper mystery, and once uncovered the sobering reality, that there is no Santa and there never was.

Oh, you can look at the history. The Roman Catholic Church does have evidence of a Saint Nicholas. Most every culture in Europe speaks of an individual who gave to children without expecting anything in return. There is some scant historical significance to back up the story, but a literal dude in a red outfit flying around with magic reindeer and elves giving literally billions of children around the world an abundant supply of gifts in less than 24 hours every year? Nope. Never was. Never will be.

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. it is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new bamboozles rise.)" - Carl Sagan, The Fine Art of Baloney Detection

For each of us it's different, and we may or may not remember the final clue that reveals to us the truth. It's never sudden, but it's always sudden. I can't even pinpoint it for myself. It was a gradual thing. One Christmas I just knew. There's no Santa. My parents had figured out that I figured it out and so we just didn't pretend anymore. I'd grown out of it. I can't even remember which year that was. Was I seven? Was I ten? Surely by fifth or sixth grade I was "too big" to be bothered with pretending to believe. In fact it's perhaps a kind of silent badge of honor. A step towards maturity. A discovery that one is that much closer to not being a kid anymore. You're in on the gag now. You're an adult now. And when you get older you can have kids and tell them about Santa and let them figure it out on their own too.

That may be where the disconnect is for me. I don't have kids. I never plan to ever have kids. I don't want kids, but if I did, I wouldn't want to lie to them. About anything. So I really can't understand why other parents do. Why do we perpetuate this lie? Why must we make up a story about how beautiful and fantastical and wondrous the winter season is? It already is. However, the way it really is wondrous is kinda scary. It's also harder to explain to a four year old, so instead we tell them this whole other story that we think is easier for them to understand.

The actual story, the actual 'reason for the season' is simply not something you can tie into a pretty red bow and put under a tree. It's not cut and dried. In some ways it is a tale still being weaved for mankind, by mankind. We don't even fully fathom it yet. Most importantly, it's not marketable. There's no way to make money off it so no one has any incentive to turn it into a marketable thing with a cute slogan and a two for one special at Walmart.

"Such reports persist and proliferate because they sell. And they sell, I think, because there are so many of us who want so badly to be jolted out of our humdrum lives, to rekindle that sense of wonder we remember from childhood, and also, for a few of the stories, to be able, really and truly, to believe--in Someone older, smarter, and wiser who is looking out for us." - Carl Sagan

What is this 'better story' that isn't? Well, funny you should ask. The same week of Christmas is something called The Winter Solstice, which has actually been heralded for thousands of years, even before the Christ Child story allegedly took place. Some believe that's why Stonehenge was built, because Early Man needed a way to understand their universe and track what things in the heavens were doing over a long period of time. If you just glance up at the stars in the sky they don't appear to be moving, but some very early human beings did notice that over time there were changes in the sky, and the stones at Stonehenge seem to be placed in just such a way so as to anticipate these changes. Before the sciences that we take for granted today, early human beings were partaking in rudimentary astronomy - star gazing. They determined that around the last week of what we now call December, the nights were the longest they ever got and the days were the shortest they ever got. Then about six moon cycles later (new, quarter, half, full, etc) the days would be the longest and nights the shortest. They didn't understand what all this means then, but before Christianity even began, human beings were trying to figure it out.

I've often found it amusing that The Three Wise Men are said to have used a star to guide them to Bethlehem to find the Christ Child where even meanie King Herod couldn't find him. Why would a star lead wise men to a stable? The answer of the Winter Solstice has always been in the stars, but those who wanted to bring attention to the Christ Child story, just took that Winter Solstice story and made a left turn at Alberquerque with it. Let's try NOT doing that this time and see where we end up.

Julius Caesar, about forty years before the presumed birth of Jesus Christ, determined that December 25th was the Winter Solstice on his "Julian Calendar." Jesus Christ wasn't literally born on December 25th. The Roman Catholic Church usurped that day, because it was when many pagans were partying anyway. The Catholics simply appropriated the holiday, and would tell the pagans they didn't have to change their traditions, just the reason for the season. I've known this for many years. As far back as a child I remember comparing notes with a friend who was a Jehovah's Witness. She said she had reason to believe Jesus was born in October. I don't recall ever finding any evidence of when he was actually born. The point was, he wasn't born in December. That's just the day we set aside to remember his birth. It's not literal. Very little in the Bible should be taken literally, unless you want to be a crazy person. The Old Testament is actually The Tanak. It's the Torah, the Nevuim and the Kevuim or whatever. It's the holy writings from the jewish tradition, and even they don't take it literally. Christians usurped the Old Testament and then tacked on the New Testament presumably as proof that the prophecies mentioned in parts of the Old Testament literally came to pass. The promise God made to his Chosen People was fulfilled presumably by the birth and death of Jesus of Nazareth. And of course, the jewish people looked at Jesus and said, "well he's a sweet little jewish boy and all but what the hell are you talking about?"

"You never see a rabbi on TV interpreting the New Testament, do you? If you want to truly understand The Old Testament, if there's something you don't quite get, there are Jews who walk among you, and they, I promise you this, will take time out of their very Jewie Jewie day and interpret for you anything that you're having trouble understanding, and we will do that if, of course, the price is right. Was the earth created in seven days? No. For those of you who believe it was, you Christians, let me tell you that you do not understand the Jewish people. We Jews know that it was not created in seven days, and that's 'cause we know what we're good at. And what we're really good at is bullshit. This is a wonderful story that was told to the people in the desert to distract them from the fact that they did not have air conditioning. I would love to have the faith that the universe was created in seven days, but I have thoughts, and they can really fuck up the faith thing. Just ask any Catholic priest." - Lewis Black

That was the beginning of the end for my belief structure but it took most of my life thus far for it to completely fall to ruin. My religion wasn't literal. Much of it was open to interpretation. As I learned more, my religious beliefs would have to adapt so as to remain meaningful and significant in the light of actual information that contradicted it. After awhile I realized I had been treating my belief structure as if it were a buffet table. The parts of Christianity that involved judging other people didn't appeal to my appetite. The parts of Christianity where I couldn't do things I wanted to do even though there were no victims and no harm caused to anyone, that didn't taste good either. Dancing for example. Baptists despise dancing, because it might lead to premarital sex. Hell, BREATHING might lead to premarital sex! Let's call that a sin too!

The light of reason slowly chipped away at what I had believed to be right bit after bit. A grand artifice planted in the middle of my existence since birth was getting smaller and held up less of anything valuable. To attempt to explain every bit as it chipped away would make this far too long. I'll try to keep it down a bit.

There's four different accounts of the Christmas story in the accepted canonical bible. Matthew Mark Luke & John. Four different accounts of Jesus' birth and life. One would think that having four different accounts from four different people would reinforce the story. However, these four accounts only have some similarities and many more differences. Things omitted from some but not others. Also, there's other documentation that didn't get canonized. There are books which the Church dismissed and didn't include. Some still exist and others are now lost forever, certainly to public scrutiny.

Our own judicial system deals with this kind of thing every day. Eyewitness testimony is always subjective, and often easily dismissed in court if you have a good attorney on your side. Human beings are fallible. So wise men and women called lawyers and judges and juries have to sort though testimony and find to the best of their ability what's credible and useful. However, these too are human beings and therefore fallible.

It was human beings like these that were instrumental in the canonization process. Where they are fallible, Christians are to presume on faith that God picked up the slack, and the final product known as The Holy Bible IS in and of itself infallible, as the word of God as God wants you to experience. Yet... it too is interpretive. You can't take it literal. If you do, you might end up blowing up buildings or killing a neighbor for having sex with someone else's wife. Or stoning people for being different. There's a lot of crap in the Bible.

But the Winter Solstice is kind of crap free. The actual event it depicts just is, regardless of what we call it and how we measure it. In fact, it proves to us where we are full of crap. The guys back during the time of Stonehenge didn't really understand it, and we're only now grasping its significance in recent centuries. What does it mean? It means that this thing we call Earth. This giant globe that we call home and take so for granted, is a spinning rock in space. It's a mudball, really. It's spinning around an even larger ball of flame made up of mostly hydrogen.

Religion tells us that God is eternal, but that God made the heavens and the earth, so they're not eternal. Science agrees there. The Sun is not a perpetual source of heat. It will run day run out, but our best estimates indicate we should have several thousand more years before we even have to worry about that. This mud ball spins around on an axis as it revolves around the Sun. It's wobbling. This time of year the wobble puts the mud ball at such an angle as to lessen the amount of solar energy to actually strike the northern hemisphere. This is why in Australia they're currently experiencing the hottest time of their year. For them, winter is summer and vice versa.

This wobble is consistent, but our perception of it is very slowly changing. The whole purpose of the Gregorian and Julian calendars was to keep track of these changes in the sky, and use them to keep track of time for humanity, and our place in the universe. When Julius Caesar's great thinkers devised the Julian calendar for him, the Winter Solstice was December 25th. Two thousand years later, that has shifted. It's now closer to December 21st. About every five hundred years it's gone back a day. So Julius Caesar's calendar wasn't exact, but considering what they had to work with 2000 years ago (y'know, no computers and stuff) that's not too shabby.

Religion tells us that The One True God doesn't change. Science has revealed that the only constant in the universe is change. Once I realized that there was no god, I wanted to be mad but there was nothing to be mad at, but "He" was never there. Not "His" fault. Not my parents' fault. They didn't know. All of humanity doesn't really know. People who disagree with my discovery still think I'm full of it. How can I KNOW when they 'know' that there IS a god?

Everyone who believes has personal life experiences that solidify that belief within them. I can't dismiss those outright. However, I've dismissed my own, and with time any irrational experience can be explained through rational thought and objective observation. I can't disprove that you believe in a religion, but I can disprove the tenets of that religion itself. If one then goes, "well you can't take X literally. It's a figurative representation of Y." That's just cheating. There comes a point when you disprove enough of the literal pieces of any given religion, that what's left can be dismissed as trivial or irrelevant.

Sure there's no Santa Claus, but the Spirit of Christmas lives on in the hearts and minds of all those who believe in the spirit of giving; that it's better to give than to receive. So long as we don't let go of that, there's a little bit of Santa in each and every one of us and WE cumulatively keep him alive. That's what we tell ourselves. Santa becomes a reminder in all adults to not forget what it's like to be children, and it's a way to get those who have wealth to not forget what it's like to have nothing. In that context, I think even most atheists would be on board the "it does more good than harm" train.

Still, it's lying. Wouldn't it be great if we could keep this 'Spirit of Giving' sentiment the whole year round, without conjuring up a complex back story that has no legitimate evidence to support itself as a way for us to remember these important tenets? Why do we have to lie to ourselves to believe in the truth?

I know there's no god for the same reason I know there's no Santa. I don't have to go to the North Pole and personally inspect every foot of land and ice up there. Even if I did, someone could then just say Santa has since moved. Now he operates not on the North Pole but in space. Or he took the workshop underground. When you're dealing with something that's not there, which isn't limited to the laws of physics or deductive reasoning, one can say anything one wants about it. There's no god because when one uses deductive reasoning and common sense to investigate the phenomenon, it doesn't hold up under the scrutiny. You investigate the legitimacy of it the same way you should investigate the legitimacy of everything in the universe to uncover what's actual and real, versus what's imaginary and speculative. The truth becomes mundane once its taken for granted, but the realization that this spinning rock in space is so incredibly delicate and precious and rare and wondrous is what we really should be celebrating every Winter Solstice. The fact that we've figured out what a Solstice is and we've named it and we comprehend our tenuous place in the universe. That's pretty amazing.

I think that realization is pretty cool. It's like learning how magic tricks work. It's like understanding how an internal combustion engine operates. It's like unveiling yet another secret of the universe, and not being afraid of what it means to how we perceive it. Back in 1897, Virginia O'Hanlon wrote to a newspaper that no longer exists and asked the newspaper to prove the legitimacy of Santa Claus. Francis Church wrote her back. He talked of little minds being skeptical in light of the enormous breadth and majesty of the universe around them.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Were Francis Church alive today, I would assure him that love and generosity and devotion can and do still exist regardless of the Santas and Saviors of our philosophies and mythologies. We anthropomorphize these things and many others because its how Mankind's minds can make sense of them, but we don't have to do that. Religion is like the training wheels on a bicycle. We've been riding with them still on long after we figured out how to ride without them. We find it comforting and we feel secure, but it's only slowing us down.

No Virginia. There is no Santa Claus. Your little friends are right.

They are skeptics. We still live in an age of skeptics, and we are growing, while slowly those who still prefer to live in the false light of hope and faith are causing their own extinction. Actual illumination brings knowledge and understanding. To shirk from this is to not want to grow up. If you have knowledge and understanding, and can act upon these things, you don't need hope and faith because you will have taken charge of your species' own future. Rather than depending on some intangible force to take care of the unknown for you, you will actively seek out the unknown and make it known.

No, science is not the end all be all of universal knowledge. No, it doesn't have all the answers. In fact, some day, we may learn so much as to see what is considered science today a load of balderdash! Einstein predicted that one day Mankind would find a Universal Theory of Physics that would tie everything up nicely. He was apparently wrong, but that day may still come. Someone may be able to figure out a way to look at the universe so that all the laws of Physics that we know now fit together like strands of hair after you combed out all the kinks. Or a universal theory might make all the previous theories and laws and things that we take for granted today obsolete, and we may call that something else entirely. No doubt when that day comes there will be scientists who resist that change, and it may take centuries for Man to take that particular "leap of faith" as well.

There are things in the universe that our little minds still cannot comprehend, but give us time, and let us ride without the training wheels, so we can find them and learn to understand. In this great universe of ours, to compare ourselves to ants is far too optimistic. However, our intellect, as compared with the boundless world about us, will be measured by the intelligence we are capable of grasping the whole of truth or knowledge.

There was a time when such contemplation would be derided as heresy. There was a time when my mere utterance of such a thought in public would put me in the stocks, or have me hung from a tree or burned at the stake, because people would misunderstand that I was being so bold as to suggest one day Man would be like God. Like Icarus with his melted wings in the face of the Sun. Quite the contrary. One day we will learn that we don't want to be like God. We never did. One day we will all declare with one loud bold voice that not only are we not God - WE MADE GOD UP. We told his story to ourselves so we wouldn't forget what he means to us, just as we told ourselves the story of Santa.

Merry Christ Myth Day. May your New Year be a bold and daring one filled with joy and laughter and knowledge and wisdom. May you not fear the future humanity has in store for itself, and may humanity be able to face the universe as it actually is and not as how we pretend it could be, because that's the only way we're going to survive it.

Stradivarius Stratocaster Revisited

Friends, Actives, Mutantites, lend me your eyes. I come not to bury Dollhouse, but to cut it up into tiny bits and feed it to you as sushi. We must do this now, while the meat remains fresh. It is what we fear most, and that's the only way out of here... Alright the metaphor is getting mangy. Let me try carving into this a different way.

Tom Lehrer once made famous the song "Masochism Tango." Spike Jones once made famous the phrase "we always hurt the ones we love." I can't help but think about these songs in this moment, as I type these words into this blog. I'm gonna regret doing this in ways I can't even fathom now. And to those who have read my previous ramblings about this show, and Whedon or Dushku in general, I may be traversing again over similar territory but I'm trying to put it all in one place for the sake of posterity. In the past I was examining a body of work in motion. Today, I'm performing an autopsy.

There is a part of me that hesitates to commit the following thoughts to the Web because they will not be popular among those I hope may see them: fans of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. The body's not even cold. The cast and crew of the television series just had their Wrap Party this past weekend. Yet here I find myself performing a virtual autopsy on this corpse, trying to figure out what went wrong.

It's easy to blame the Fox Network. Far too easy. They've made it easy. Fox purposefully removed Dollhouse from November Sweeps so that it wouldn't show up in the ratings for this quarter. One could argue that's a mercy killing. There's no illusion that its ratings would suddenly improve. They were going down. Fox could have been doing Mutant Enemy and we the fans a huge favor. The pessimist in me doubt it, but any attempt to describe what I think really happened leads to more speculation than on the streets of Dealy Plaza any lazy Saturday afternoon.

I have a working theory that Whedon's ideas simply don't gibe with the mindsets of people very high on Fox Television's corporate food chain. I'm sure there are some people in the trenches of the network and its subsidiaries are in Whedon's camp, and some of them may be more fanboyish than myself. However, Fox is also the entity that brings us "Faux News" and insists that senators praying for guidance is newsworthy. So there's people with brains and people without brains, and the zombies have long since stormed that particular castle. There's a disconnect here. The Left Hand... as it were. However, I've no proof. Nor do I have the capacity to get such proof. I merely have my own scruples & idiosyncracies and prejudices against anyone who "goes a little Brummel." Like corporate executives.

The bigger picture is the audience. Word had gotten out amongst the mainstream audience that Dollhouse was a lost cause and no one was going to give it a try, except those of us who had already seen Man On The Street, Briar Rose, & Epitaph One. There's a Potential in Dollhouse that's never fully been realized, even as Whedon's forces pulled all the stops to end season two with a megaton bang. That potential can be sensed in episodes like True Believer and Haunted. This series had the chance to be a different show every episode, taking us more places and doing more things than even Sam & Al could have explored in Quantum Leap's best moments. We've seen glimpses of this, but it couldn't get out from behind impending doom long enough to wallow in the izness of its bizness. It didn't hit the ground running. It flailed and walked like a pony that just plooped out of its mother's womb, and the network and the audience were expecting it to win the Kentucky Derby seconds after its birth. It was never given a chance to fail before it could succeed. Most television shows have had similar problems, which is why TV pilots have such a high mortality rate. Too many are too desperate to demand a quick return on their investment, and they're too hasty to cut their losses and whine about lost profits when had they held out longer the investment would have been paid back over time.

I mean okay. The series had a rocky start. Dollhouse's first (broadcast) episode opens with Eliza Dushku riding onto a dance floor with a motorcycle. When I saw that the first time I was like What the Fuck? Really? You're gonna OPEN with this, Whedon? You've got to be kidding me. There's no scenario realistically where this would ever happen anywhere on the planet without the guy who owns the place running onto the dance floor screaming at the top of his lungs how much damage those tires are causing to hardwood floors and who's gonna pay for all this? It was completely illogical, and set the tone (for me at least) that Whedon just wasn't taking this thing as seriously as I'd like him to take it.

And that's what brings me back to writing these very thoughts down somewhere. I don't want to make these incisions on this corpse. I don't want anyone to, but someone must. What really killed Dollhouse? Why is it on this slab? Why, in the months to come, will people be mourning yet another great Whedon series, and forever speak about it in the past tense as we now do so for Buffy and Angel and Firefly? Could something have been done to save it, or was it doomed from the start. Perhaps it's best to not open the ribcage. Do we really need to know?

I fear I do know, and no one's going to like it. I think what killed Dollhouse ultimately is the very entity at the heart of its life essence. I think the reason Dollhouse failed is Eliza Dushku. Please don't take this the wrong way. I can see the torches and pitchforks outside my window already. Hear me out.

Eliza Dushku is a hardworking performer. She's been at this most of her life. She's a vibrant woman with an infectious and voracious appetite for life. This exudes all she does. She illuminates a room when she enters it. She loves the camera and the camera loves her and this is an ongoing love affair. It's so easy to fall into a complacency that she can do no wrong.

We diehard fans have heard the tale told many times. How did Dollhouse come to be? Eliza Dushku had a contract with Fox. She needed another pilot to fulfill that contract and she wanted it to be a successful one but didn't have a story idea, so she went to the one man in her life with the most uniquely qualified skills to deliver the goods. She took Joss Whedon out for pizza.

I invited Joss Whedon to lunch after I did the business deal and decided that Fox, we'd had a cool relationship in the past and I wanted to do something else and I wanted to get back into a television show. I had him on the brain for sure but I hadn't called him yet, but I sort of took a leap of faith and set things up with Fox and then called Joss. We went to a four-hour lunch where I just sort of used my womanly wiles. No, we've become such good friends, kind of like brother and sister and kind of like he was my watcher, my handler from when I first moved out to L.A. when I was 17 and I was a little bit of a wild child. He's watched me and helped me and taught me over the years. I told him how bad I wanted and needed him back and he accepted and here we are.

She laid it out for him on the table. He knew what she needed and what she didn't have. They talked not only about her requirements to fulfill the contract, but also what she needed herself as a talent and an artist. By the end of that meal Joss understood fully where Eliza was coming from and what she required. More importantly, he knew what he'd seen inside Eliza since the first time she auditioned for the part of Faith back during the production of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Eliza Dushku is more than just an actress. She's an humanitarian. She's a risk seeker. She's athletic. She wants to help make the world a better place. She wants to experience life like a child experiences a watermelon the first time. I mean maybe we're all like that, but she actually goes out there and does it. More importantly she's something far more important than the actress you and I take so for granted: she's her mother's daughter.

She's the daughter of a Suffolk professor named Judith Dushku, who goes around the world speading peace and shining a glaring light on infringements of women's rights, human suffering, and government excess. Although she doesn't seem to advertise this boldly for personal gain, Eliza has been known to assist her mother in these efforts, and also use her celebrity status in sensible ways to help bring attention to these global atrocities. In that way, she's a true hero in a sense that Echo or Faith can never be. I imagine Eliza would be quick to point out that her mom's the real hero, having laid her own reputation and career on the line repeatedly for a cause that's far bigger and more important than herself.

So please do not think me a hater or an asshole when I say what I'm about to say about Eliza Dushku. I respect her greatly as an actress, a humanitarian, and as a partying babe. I hope to buy her a drink some day. Although this blog post will probably make that even less a possibility than before. Eliza Dushku is a woman who is many things to many different people. She has to wear a lot of hats in her life. We all do. You are a different person to your boss than you are to your family. The you that you present yourself as when you hang with your mom or your dad is a different you than the you that you present to a complete stranger at a bar, or the lady at the Dept of Motor Vehicles when you renew your license. We all wear different hats. However, Eliza Dushku wears different hats all over the freaking planet. She may not be alone in that, but she is unique in the hats she wears and how she chooses to wear them. So it's with this approach to her day to day life that she came to her approach to the character of Echo, and all the hats that Echo wears.

Joss Whedon looked across the table at Eliza that day at the pizzaria. He excused himself and went to the bathroom. We assume he washed his hands. Then he returned and told her what eventually became The Dollhouse. We know this story. It's an adorable story.

What we don't know is that Joss Whedon came up with The Dollhouse based on what he believed Eliza Dushku could do as an actress. He'd seen her potential with his own eyes and anyone who's seen her work on Buffy can attest that Whedon was right. The woman's daring. As an actress she's bold and brash and the camera just gobbles her up like bubble gum & she's always got more at her disposal. However, he's too close to her to properly direct her. He loves her too much as a friend and like a brother to be able to say to her what needs to be said to really get what he needed from her to make Echo work. The role he invented for her was going to need something more than Dushku can provide. It was going to need an Eliza Dushku that could stop being Eliza Dushku.

As much as I despise Meryl Streep's acting style (again she's a great person don't get me wrong but unlike Dushku I can't watch Streep w/o wincing - it'd take far too long to explain and it's not important) I have to admit that when Streep delves into a role, The Meryl Streep simply disappears. Even with her celebrity status, there comes a point where you forget she's Meryl Streep and you accept that she's whoever the hell she's portraying. Sophie. Silkwood. That weird lady in Lemony Snicket. Streep stops being Streep when on stage or in front of the camera and instead she embodies the character itself. When it comes to acting, Meryl Streep uses her body like a musician would use a Stradivarius. It's a very versatile instrument that can either be a wistful longing melancholy in a folk song, a disturbing cadence of fear and disillusionment in a horror movie soundtrack, or it can carry the lion's share of urgency in a great classical symphony.

Streep is a Stradivarius. Comparatively, Eliza Dushku is a fender stratocaster.

I think I've said this before elsewhere but I hope to more successfully explain myself so that no one gets the wrong idea. Jimi Hendrix once performed The Star Spangled Banner on a fender stratocaster, and it kicked some major mother fucking ass. Even to this day, it still stands out as one of the greatest accomplishments of 20th century music. However, there's no denying that it's an electric guitar. Hendrix was performing a song that had never before been heard in that manner. You could still recognize the melody, but he created something entirely new and different by taking the sound of an electric guitar and putting it to such a traditional piece. An electric guitar is also a versatile instrument. However, unlike the violin, it can't hide. It can't become something new. No matter where you put an electric guitar, you're gonna know it's an electric guitar. It doesn't make you forget it's an electric guitar. It can't let you. A violin can get out from behind its own reputation and keep you in the moment, feeling the emotion and the overall flow of the music as part of an ensemble. A guitar wants to do all that, but it can't help being so mother fucking cool.

So this brings us to Echo, who is a character that the audience of Dollhouse has to believe at times is a clean slate, and at other times has to believe she's got over forty different people inside her. This is a role Joss Whedon tailor made for Eliza Dushku because he knows she has the chops for it. And she does. However, she's like an electric guitar inside a classical symphonic orchestra. She can hit all the notes, but only crazy people like you or me are gonna like it.

An electric guitar inside a classical symphonic orchestra would be awesome. It IS awesome. It's a great idea! It probably has been done before. I wish it'd be done so I could experience it cuz just thinking about it makes my eyes all wide and puts a stupid smile on my face. However, you're never gonna get a mainstream audience to accept an electric guitar inside a classical symphonic orchestra and that's actually a damn shame cuz I think it'd kick some major ass. Mainstream America sucks.

There was ONE time during the course of Dollhouse when I think I saw Eliza Dushku stop being Eliza Dushku and just start being who she needed to be to pull off the role. There's some moments in the second season episode "Instinct" where Echo thinks she's the mother of a baby and she feels the baby is in jeopardy. In those moments, I forgot she was Eliza Dushku, and after it happened I was taken aback. I had to remind myself to breathe. I had been looking for Dushku to pull that off for a season and a half and she actually did it. I was flabbergasted. But then at the end of the episode there's a moment where she's talking to Boyd and that moment was gone. Dushku was back. She was Dushku doing Echo looking at all these people in her head. Echo didn't have her own identity beyond the actress. Now you might think I'm expecting too much of her, and you may be right, but Alan Tudyk is able to successfully pull off a composite personality, and then show us distinct personalities when the script calls for it. We don't see that from Dushku. Things are not cut & dried for her and perhaps that's a direction mistake. Perhaps she CAN better telegraph Penn to an audience as opposed to Taffy or Esther, but in those moments when that's needed, I don't see it. Even separating the Active from the Actual, we see Enver Gjokaj do this most exquisitely in practically every episode in which he appears. Victor is unique as an Active. Though he's a clean slate, you can see from the blank face to simplistic mannerisms and childlike grace that he's Victor. Then Gjokaj does Topher or that dancing chick or that Russian dude or in The Attic he does the character's actual self Tony and there's such a subtle and yet brilliant difference. The audience needs to be informed that a new person inhabits the body and the other actors do it very well. I could waft eloquent for paragraphs about how well Dichen Lachman creates a distinct new persona for every character the writers throw at her. I must admit reluctantly that Miracle Laurie didn't exactly do this with November's actual persona Madeline Costly. I don't see much difference between Madeline and Mellie. This pains me because of all the actresses on the show, I must admit Miracle Laurie's the most sexy. So I've been star struck by her throughout the series but objectively speaking I have to admit she has a similar problem to Eliza Dushku - her "performer toolbox" is ill-equipped to portray this many distinct characters. Seems she pretty much just portrays herself. Which is great. Tom Hanks does that. Most actors do that actually, but it's not what The Dollhouse needed to be successful.

And that's what it all really boils down to when you really think about it. I think perhaps the mainstream audience would have embraced this series had there been more violins in its virtual orchestra, but a couple electric guitars in the mix just didn't ring true. That's okay for me. I prefer to see Shakespeare performed by punks in modern day costumes as opposed to the stereotypical classical way with the fancy Elizabethan costuming and melodramatic approach to the poetic dialogue. I like my theater a little uncouth. I prefer my orchestras w/electric guitars in them. Unfortunately, I'm not most of the world. Mainstream America simply isn't that daring.

Boob Toob 2009

Television has changed since I was a kid. I remember when I was around ten my family often referred to me when they wanted to know what was on. The reason was because each week when the TV Guide arrived on our doorstep via postal mail or from the supermarket or from the Sunday paper, I'd be the first to grab it and I'd practically memorize the whole thing. Certainly the prime time schedule and the cartoons on Saturday morning. I was a walking encyclopedia of useless television information. I knew Farrah Fawcett was the oldest Angel (30). I knew Kristy MacNichol and Leif Garrett had a thing for each other (but it ended in tears). I knew the names of all the Smurfs. You get the idea.

Today it's different. My television is in a corner of my room gathering dust. Its darkened unblinking eye reflects the distant light from my computer monitor as I type these words. I used to look at it but now it's looking at me, perhaps wondering what it did wrong. I used to enjoy passive entertainment. Now I still do, but I like a more interactive element to my entertainment. Or rather, I like the illusion of interactivity. I like making notes about shows I watch and I do enjoy comments and replies from others about these shows, but sometimes I wonder if I didn't get any feedback or input, would I be doing this anyway? I like to criticize the shows I watch, but I don't know if I'd like to do anything about it. Would I want to improve it? Could I if I were given an option? Most likely not. I used to believe I could make a living with ideas in my head. So far that hasn't materialized. I only make a living by blindly following the whims of other people's ideas, which is perhaps more than anything why I refuse to discuss 'work' in my blog. Well, that and office politics and nondisclosure agreements and things I don't understand. I go here to get away from all that stuff. 'Nuff said.

So today when I say "television" I'm not actually referring to a television. I watch pretty much all my TV online, so it's no longer really TV. It's Hulu or DVDs or YouTube or whatever I can find. I stopped paying for cable television when the SciFi Channel canceled Mystery Science Theater 3000. I had wanted to quit cable for a long time because I couldn't rationalize paying for all these channels that were subjecting me to commercials over and above my subscription fee. I thought the whole purpose behind Pay TV was to make commercials obsolete? Further, when MST3K was removed from the airwaves, it occurred to me that whoever the people behind cable television were making cable television for? It wasn't for me. They were keeping stuff I didn't like on the air and removing stuff I did like. So I left cable over a decade ago now and I have no desire of going back.

Hulu has been talking about going to some kind of pay model. If that happens, I fear I'll have to look elsewhere. If I were made of money it wouldn't matter, but already I pay to get on the Internet. Then there's ads all over the place. I'm not going to pay to access every website on top of that, and a pox on you if you give in to that. That would be like going to a club in Deep Ellum, having to pay to drive there (gas), then having to pay to park, then having to pay to get in the door (cover charge) then having to pay for everything I drink or eat at outrageously jacked up prices, then having to tip the bartenders and waitresses, and then having to pay the band for playing for every song. Yeah, I stopped clubbing about a decade or so ago too.

The cost of living is just too expensive to enjoy. So instead I like to spend my free time on the Web. The last bastion of serenity in a life where I'm pretty much waiting stupidly for something interesting to happen to me because I'm too cheap and lazy and unproductive to just go out there and make something happen to me.

Back in 2003 I boycotted FOX because they canceled Firefly, Tru Calling, and a host of other programs I enjoy. I was livid and felt helpless. I didn't quit on FOX because I thought it'd make a difference to them. I knew they wouldn't notice. I just no longer wanted to even passively support a network that refused to cater to my interests. This eventually expanded to most other networks too but to lesser degrees.

I have since gone back and looked for what I missed on the FOX network. The only show that comes to mind that I wish I'd seen as it was broadcast was HouseMD and recently I've 'caught up' on that one. DVDs are wonderful things. I still don't watch the Simpsons anymore, and pretty much everything else on FOX between 2003 and now has been kinda... well, Lie To Me is cool, but that's a relatively new show. I dropped my boycot when Whedon and Dushku got with FOX to bring Dollhouse to TV. I thought I'd give the network a second chance.

Today, I understand that FOX has canceled Dollhouse, but it doesn't really mean anything to me now. It has no relevance, because FOX and ABC and NBC and and Scyfy and BBC and CBC and Discovery Channel and Comedy Central are to me really all Hulu. HBO is a pain in the ass because it doesn't put jack shit on Hulu. So I don't watch Bill Maher as often as I'd like. When I do it's in pieces over at YouTube. I've only started watching Monk because it's now available on Hulu, but unfortunately I started liking it just in time to watch it end. CBS also hasn't entered the 21st century yet so I have to find Big Bang Theory by 'other means.' These networks, both the ones getting with the program and the ones holding out, are in fear of obsolescence. They want to still matter. They still want you to know that LOST is on ABC or HEROES is on NBC. I know this, but it's about as pointless to me now as memorizing the special guest stars appearing on Happy Days back in the 1970s. It might be a novel thing to know, but it's trivial, because it has no practical usefulness to me any longer. The networks can fret all they want, but they're already obsolete.

They can either speed this process along and embrace their own extinction, or they can fight it, but the latter won't even slow it down, and the former won't be a more noble way to go out. Just as the dinosaurs couldn't stop the meteor from slamming into Earth, television has no way to stave off its own execution. It has served its purpose for almost a century, but now it's going the way of the dodo. One could argue that it's because people like me no longer wish to pay for it, but I think that's more of a symptom than a cause. It's an after effect.

Recently I saw a news report claiming that nearsightedness is on the rise in America, just as obesity is. The question then became is that because more Americans are embracing entertainment via smartphones and laptops as opposed to trying to make a three pointer shot in the basketball court of a community YMCA? Or is it that we human beings tend to prefer entertainment that is less taxing, and lends to our strengths? I'm near sighted but I've been nearsighted since I was a kid. Granted, I was practically born and raised on television, but I think this is a kinda 'chicken and the egg' deal. In my youth I liked TV cuz it's easier than trying to entertain myself by going outside to play. Today, I prefer the web because it's cheaper and when it tries to tell me what to spend what little money I have, I can usually squelch the noise. I don't have that option with television, and with billboards getting bigger and becoming more and more prominent on my daily commute, real life is becoming more and more annoying.

The Internet allows me to create my own network. ZachTV. My programs are broadcast when I want to see them, not when some guy in a suit decides its most ideal for some demographic. My programming never conflicts. If CASTLE and HEROES are on the air at the same time for the rest of the world, I just wait a day and watch them at my leisure, in whichever order I prefer. I can include in my virtual network programming that regular networks would never touch. My programs don't have to be thirty minutes or an hour long. They can be five minutes long, or three hours long. Whatever length is necessary to accomodate the needs of the program itself. I get my news from Jon Stewart, Marta Costello, Uncle Jay and The Onion Network. My programs don't get pre-empted by the President's speech. In fact if it weren't for Jon Stewart telling me on The Daily Show that the president recently had a speech, I wouldn't know about it at all, and that's just the way I like it.

Aside form network shows like Dollhouse, Castle, Monk, Big Bang Theory, Heroes, Fringe, House MD, Sanctuary, Lie To Me, Lost, and The Daily Show w/Jon Stewart, I also regularly watch Mister Deity, Felicia Day's The Guild, Mediocre Films, 2 Hot Girls In The Shower, Rooster Teeth, Kilplixism, The Art Of The Drink, The Onion, Val's Art Diary, Gnooze & Uncle Jay Explains The News. In conventional network television, these shows don't belong together. As far as I'm concerned, this is the best that today's entertainers have to offer me, so for me they're all one big happy family.

I was watching Kevin Pollak's Chat Show until recently. Even though the show actually still exists on the web for anyone else to see, KPCS is currently on hiatus in my virtual network with a demographic of one. I'm debating whether or not I want to renew it for a second season. There are some things about it that I like and other things about it that I don't. I guess that's like how Fox Network executives feel about Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. It's a good show, but for some reason just doesn't accomplish what it needs to in order to keep the audience at an acceptable level of interest.

I used to blame networks for that. Now, I have no one to blame but myself if I watch something I don't like anymore.